Live in God-Consciousness

Nayaswami Jyotish shares this inspiring story and inspiration told Paramhansa Yogananda during his Sunday Service at Ananda Village, April 17th 2022. You can find the complete talk here.

Transcription

Yogananda told an interesting story-parable, said: There was a great saint who lived in a little village. And he put his protective aura around the village.

And the angel of death came and said, "There is a smallpox epidemic that is going on. And it is time for some of the villagers to get smallpox and die." And the saint said, "Well, I've put my protective aura around this village; you can't take anyone." And the angel of death said, "Well, let me take just three to fulfill the law of karma." And the saint said, "Okay, I'll allow you to take three."

And so, in the next few days, three people died. But then more people died, and more people died. And pretty soon, like 100 people in the village had died! And this upset the saint.

And so he called back the angel of death. And he said, "You've gone back on your promise." He said, "All these people have died." And the angel of death said, "No, no. I did exactly what I said I would do. I only took three people. The others have died because of their fear. They've basically killed themselves."

And so, see, our consciousness has to evolve away from the consciousness of, "I am the body; therefore I am vulnerable to sickness." Yogananda said that many, many times, people have an illness, and they're done with the illness, and the illness exits. But because of their fear, or because of their concern, they draw that illness right back to themselves. And it isn't even their karma to do that. Except it's their karma because they haven't evolved.

Because if we can understand that we're more than just the outer body—more than the form—then our consciousness becomes uplifted and begins to cooperate with the laws of the universe and the laws of health. But if we think that we're the body, then dire fears come back in.

So we have to extract ourselves, not just from this physical form, but from all other forms, and to see that we're nothing more than the consciousness of God; and that consciousness is imbued in every form in the very atomic structure of creation, or the lifetronic structure of the astral world, and the thoughttronic—these are terms, Yogananda said—of the causal world: that it's all just God playing in various forms.

And when we see, not just intellectually, but no—absolutely—that our form is nothing other than God, then how could we ever die? How could we ever get sick? How could anything happen? So that's what Jesus came to demonstrate to us, and all great masters are demonstrating the same thing.